The Second Siege (24 page)

“We can leave now,” said Miss Boon, straightening and wiping her face with a handkerchief. “We have the Key. We’ll fill you in later.”

Cooper’s eyes flicked to the sphere and then to the burning talisman.

“Good,” he said, crossing over to stow the sphere in David’s pack. “I’m assuming we can hitch a ride out of here?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Dr. Rasmussen said, glancing once more at Bram’s Key before the flap was closed and buckled. “It’s the least we can do. Where would you like to go? We have a variety of options via tunnel.”

“What are they?” asked Cooper, wiping the dried blood from his chin.

Dr. Rasmussen ticked them off on his fingers.

“Immediate options are Prague, Venice, Budapest, Amsterdam, Brussels, London, and Berlin.”

“Which are still resisting?”

“Most are conquered; Brussels and Prague are still being difficult.”

“Amsterdam, then,” said Cooper, swinging David’s pack over his shoulder. “The Enemy attention will be stronger where there’s active resistance.”

The Agent turned and jabbed a finger at Dr. Rasmussen.

“And I want that homing contraption out of Mr. McDaniels,” added the Agent. “Right now.”

Max glanced at his father as Dr. Rasmussen frowned.

“Oh, very well,” he said, punching several more buttons on the keypad of his computer.

Mr. McDaniels burped, a prolonged, rumbling expulsion that apparently took him by surprise.

“Excuse me,” he muttered, massaging his belly. He blinked several times and suddenly retched, clutching the edge of the table.

“Dad!” said Max, running to his father’s side.

“He’ll be fine,” said Dr. Rasmussen. “Extrication is a bit unpleasant but harmless.”

Mr. McDaniels grimaced like a toddler sipping cough syrup.

“It’s crawling,” he gasped. “It’s crawling up my stomach!”

A formidable
bloop-bloop-bloop
sounded within his belly. David inched away. Mr. McDaniels gave a monstrous belch and promptly launched a silver ball on an impressive trajectory until it plunked unceremoniously on the golem’s head. Tiny hooks retracted back into the device and its small green light slowly extinguished.

“Whew!” said Mr. McDaniels, loosening his belt. “I could use a beer.”

“If you weren’t in such a hurry, we’d accommodate you,” said Dr. Rasmussen, swiveling to face the monitors. He eliminated the multiple views so that one image dominated the screen—that of a middle-aged man sitting in an enormous room filled with computers. Many engineers were busily occupied in the background.

“Hello, Sunil,” said Dr. Rasmussen. “Thank you for taking post in my absence. I’d like to know casualty numbers if we have them.”

The man nodded, his face grave.

“Ninety-seven dead, fifty-two injured, and one missing.”

“Dr. Braden, I presume?”

“Yes, sir. May I ask why you’ve elected to open the main gates, sir?”

The thin smile on Dr. Rasmussen’s face evaporated.

“What are you talking about?”

“The main gates, sir. They’re opening as we speak.”

“Well, close them!”
commanded Rasmussen.

“Sir, you know as well as I do that they must open fully before they can be closed again.”

Rasmussen swore and split the screen to include another view. From a camera in the main entry hall, Max watched the pyramid’s great gates swinging outward. Each of the interlocking doors was over a hundred feet tall, sliding open on tracks that glistened with gears and machine oil. Max marveled at how smoothly they operated—each door must have weighed a million pounds, and yet they were opening without a sound.

“What are those?” asked Dr. Rasmussen, squinting at a bobbing field of lights beyond the gates.

Max drew a sharp intake of breath.

“Torches,” said Cooper. “Thousands of them.”

“Oh my God,” muttered Rasmussen. “Sunil, broadcast Emergency Code Ten. Workshop is to be put on total lockdown—all residents are to proceed to nearest seismic shelters without delay.”

The man nodded, and his image disappeared from the screen.

“Our defensive cordons have been disabled,” Rasmussen whispered. “We’re wide open.”

Max gaped at the churning sea of torches that extended beyond sight. Horns blared and drums thundered as countless needle-fanged imps and winged homunculi and long-armed goblins chattered and shrieked in a semicircle outside the yawning gates. Behind them were thousands of vyes, some in trench coats, some in soldier’s fatigues, all terrifying silhouettes of wolfish, matted fur. Beyond the vyes, huge shapes moved in the dim reaches outside the range of spotlights that now swept frantically across the jeering throng.

When the gates ground to a halt, two dozen gray-bellied ogres in horned helmets lumbered past the smaller creatures, lugging steel spikes larger than a man. Great mauls rose and fell in a jolting symphony of sparks. Moments later, the gates were wedged open with dozens of thick spikes pinning the doors back like crude metal stitches. The din from the monstrous rabble grew so great, the cameras shook.

Dr. Rasmussen had slunk so far down in his chair as to be nearly invisible.

“Why aren’t they rushing in?” he gibbered. “What are they waiting for?”

The screams and roars and drums reached a fevered pitch. Torches began to part as the motley assemblage formed a corridor in their center. Something made its way slowly toward the gate. Max ran up to the screen as the lead figure came into view.

It was Marley Augur.

The traitorous blacksmith rode forward astride an enormous horse that had been barded for war. Swinging casually from a strap at his saddle was the same black hammer that had crippled Peter Varga and nearly killed Max. A cruel-looking crown of iron had been fitted to his skull; a fine mesh of black mail was draped over long, gaunt limbs whose flesh had eroded over the centuries. The revenant’s head was held high, thin braids of white hair hanging at his temples. Hollow eyes danced with the flicker of corpse candles.

He surveyed the towering entryway, stopping his horse before the threshold. The image steadied as the din died away. A familiar voice, deep and terrible, called out.

“Come forth and pay tribute!”

All eyes in the room turned toward Dr. Rasmussen. He looked wildly from face to face.

“You can’t possibly think I’m going down there!”

“Someone is,” said Max, spying a lone shadow lengthening toward the open gates.

Dr. Braden emerged into view, appearing no bigger than a child as she stepped gingerly past the hunched, helmeted ogres leaning on their mauls. Augur watched her come, sitting patiently astride his restless horse. He acknowledged her with a solemn bow and let her pass. She disappeared into the silent horde, which closed around her as though she had been swallowed. Augur’s voice rang out again.

“In the name of Astaroth the Wise, I do hereby demand Jesper Rasmussen to come forth and to bring with him Rowan’s sons and daughters.”

Dr. Rasmussen moaned and hid his face as Augur continued.

“If you arrive quickly, my lord shall be merciful—not one among us shall cross this threshold and we will leave you be. If you delay, we shall claim each firstborn among you. Cower and we will grind every last soul and stone to dust.”

The effect was nearly instantaneous. Rasmussen was jerked to his feet by the engineers and soldiers, whom terror had transformed into a roiling, hysterical mob that kicked and beat him toward the door. Cooper swam through the mob and pulled Rasmussen away, shielding the man.

“Get out!”
shrieked one of the wild-eyed engineers.
“Get out before they kill us all!”

Max shooed Nick toward the door, ducking a hurled computer in the process. It shattered above his head. His father shielded David and Miss Boon as they stumbled out. Max yanked Mum along as the hag screamed obscenities and strained to throttle Dr. Bhargava, who had struck her with a briefcase. They spilled out into the hallway. The man Sunil, to whom Rasmussen had spoken, whirred around the corner in one of the gleaming pods.

“Take this and leave,” he said, jumping out.

“Sunil, help me,” pleaded Rasmussen, clutching his colleague.

The man’s expression remained strong and fixed as he stepped past Dr. Rasmussen into the control room, shutting the door quietly behind him. Rasmussen merely blinked in shock until Cooper pushed him into the transport. Max tugged his father’s elbow as they all piled in behind.

“Dad, maybe you don’t have to go,” whispered Max, squeezing his father’s arm.

Mr. McDaniels turned to his son and smiled with eyes as bright as sapphires.

“Of course I do.”

“Main gate,” muttered Cooper, tapping a white touch screen. His command made no difference. Someone else was steering. The pod careened down the passageway, merging abruptly onto a main tube that sped them toward the gate.

A funereal silence filled the transport pod. Cooper seemed preternaturally calm as he placed the kris across his lap and methodically double-checked his bootlaces and the fastenings on David’s backpack. Cinching the straps a bit tighter, he handed the bag to Max.

“What are you planning to do?” asked Mr. McDaniels hoarsely.

“I don’t know,” replied the Agent, looking out the window and breathing deeply.

The pod glided down the tube’s moderate decline before banking smoothly around a turn that deposited them into the enormous entry hall. Redwoods stretched toward shafts of artificial sunlight as the pod skimmed past abandoned tables and chairs and the café, whose espresso machine sputtered plumes of steam. Far ahead were the gates—a tall rectangle of swimming torchlight where distant ogres seemed no more than matchsticks propped against the great silver doors.

The ogres appeared considerably larger as the pod approached. The monsters loomed twelve feet tall, with gnarled limbs, swollen bellies, and wet eyes that leered with piggish cunning from under gladiatorial helmets. Two dozen of them stood lining the open doors, careful not to extend even a toe over the gate’s threshold. Beyond them, Augur waited astride a horse that Max now saw was no living thing at all but an undead construct of pale bone and sinew beneath its ornate plating.

The skeletal horse’s teeth champed and ground together; bone slid smoothly over bone while the horse pranced restlessly from side to side in a jingle of plates and straps and stirrups. Nick took one look at the hollow eyes and made an agitated hissing noise Max had never heard before. Grizzly-like claws extended from between the lymrill’s toes, and he scratched frantically against the windows.

“Don’t look at them,” said Max, squeezing his father’s hand as the pod slowed to a halt.

Mr. McDaniels made a sound in his throat but did not respond.

Max began to sense the same terrible coldness he’d experienced in Marley Augur’s crypt the previous year. It was an unnatural feeling, a cadaverous chill of icy bogs and frostbitten graves that crept up the fingernails and slid under the skin to tunnel deep within the marrow.

“I can’t breathe,” his father croaked.

Max was confident his father would persevere; he was more worried about David. His roommate looked like a small lump of uncooked dough that had been wedged into a corner of the pod. For all of David’s uncanny knowledge and power, Max knew he had never experienced anything like this before. Marley Augur was a far cry from the lonely spirit they’d encountered during their Acclimation.

Cooper exited the pod, keeping his wary eyes on the ogres as the rest clambered out. The blacksmith was a terrible figure indeed as he looked down upon them, proud and grim as an ancient king. Beyond the horseman was a sea of sputtering torches and glinting teeth that waited in breathless silence.

“We’ve done as you’ve asked,” Cooper said. “Remove those barricades so they can close the gates.”

“You do not command here,” said Marley Augur in a voice deep and cold. “These are the terms. You will lay down your arms and surrender the Key of Elias Bram, which we know you keep. The two sons of the Sidh shall depart with the witches, as was promised. The rest shall leave here and return to Rowan in order to arrange for its peaceful submission.”

Mr. McDaniels looked past Augur at the assembled horde. “The witches don’t sound half bad,” he whispered, glancing at Max and David.

David coughed and shook his head. “We’ll only consider the terms from Astaroth himself,” said the small boy.

Max heard the ogres shuffle behind him, rumbling with laughter at David’s demand.

The witch-fires in Augur’s eyes flared with anger. “I speak for his lordship, you miserable whelp.”

“You’re a traitor to your people,” said David, stepping forward to stand just before the monstrous charger. “You are beyond redemption and beneath contempt.”

The ogres ceased their laughter. Mr. McDaniels crossed himself and shut his eyes; even Cooper gaped at David, who stood gazing solemnly at the revenant.

A green mist gathered slowly about Augur; Max knew it did not bode well. He hurried to David’s side just as Augur hefted the murderous black hammer.

“Stop.”

The command rang from far back in the cavern, issued in a musical tenor that rose from the throng of hideous vyes and hook-nosed imps. Augur froze and looked back as a small procession came up the aisle in a merry jingling of bells. A horn blared, followed by another and another until the cavern rang with their call. The armies began to cheer and stamp and resume their guzzling of plundered wine as the procession came into view.

Max saw that it was a delicate golden carriage, pulled by two black wolves the size of plow horses. The gilded coach rolled along, flanked by four deathly knights that looked to have been raised from some long slumber to serve whatever lurked behind the closed red drapes. Marley Augur scowled and wheeled his horse away from David as the tattered flags of conquered countries were raised on waving pikes. A great cry rose up among the assembled horde.

The sound was deafening, drowning out the jingling bells and Mum’s muttered oaths and obscenities. The panting wolves brought the carriage to a stop, positioning the curtained window so that it faced them broadside. Max retched as a miasma radiated from the golden carriage, a nauseating smell of death and disease and brimstone. Several more trumpets sounded, and torches were raised in manic tribute before all subsided to silence once again.

Laughter sounded within the carriage. A soft tenor spoke.

“Do forgive the noise,” it said. “They but halloo their names to the reverberate hills.”

“What?” asked Mum, nibbling at her lower lip.

“It’s Shakespeare,” said Miss Boon quietly.

“Indeed it is, Hazel Benson Boon,” said the amused voice. “I’d wager you’re familiar with all his works. I wish you could have been with me to enjoy them at the old Globe. I was moved to participate in a performance or two, but I fear the bard disapproved of my Iago—felt I’d misinterpreted the character. I’m sure he knew best, of course. . . .And how are
you,
Max McDaniels?”

Max froze at hearing his name spoken by the presence within the carriage.

“I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance and to thank you personally for rescuing me,” said the voice.

“I didn’t rescue you,” whispered Max.

“But you did,” the voice insisted. “Without
you,
I’d still be confined within that depressing Rembrandt. So dark, so dreary. As a reward, you shall have the honor of accompanying me as an aide-de-camp before fulfilling your obligation to the witches. You have no objections, I trust, Dame Mako?”

Max heard the witch’s voice inside the carriage. The old woman sounded terrified.

“Of course not, my lord,” she said.

“I’m most grateful,” said the voice. “And Max, is this the one who claims to be your father? Step forward, good sir, so I can have a look at you.”

Sweat ran in little rivers down Scott McDaniels’s face. He took two halting steps toward the golden carriage. The gauzy red drape was pulled back to reveal a pale white face inside.

For the second time in his life, Max looked upon Astaroth. The Demon was as pale as an apparition and radiated a faint luminescence within the carriage’s dark interior. Black hair fell like two bolts of silk past his shoulders and onto white robes. The face was beautiful but shone as cold and dead as a mask. Black eyes crinkled into sickle moons of merriment as Astaroth tapped a serpentine rod against the carriage’s door.

“Closer,” the Demon whispered, beckoning with a playful smile.

With another shuffling step, Scott McDaniels stood a mere six feet from the open window.

“Hmmm,” Astaroth mused, gazing up and down at Mr. McDaniels. “Max must be his mother’s son—they always are,” he added with a knowing smile. “And is the other one David Menlo?”

“He is, my lord,” said Dame Mako, huddled beneath her robes on the opposite seat.

Astaroth slid closer to the carriage window and looked David up and down.

“You fancy yourself quite a summoner, don’t you, David?” chided the Demon. “That’s a dangerous business, my young friend. Do you see Dame Mako here?”

David nodded, his hands bunched into shaking fists.

“She’s not terribly comfortable, as you can see. Dame Mako would far prefer to see me confined within a pentacle, but unlike you, she’s wise enough to know it can’t be done,” said Astaroth, wagging a long-nailed finger. “For shame. Did you really think you could compel
me
to come running? That hasn’t been managed for quite some time, my friend. Do you think you should be punished for your arrogance?”

“No,” whispered David.

“Speak up, child.”

“No,”
repeated David, furiously wiping away tears on his sleeve.

“Shhh,” said Astaroth. “There’s no need for that. Come closer.”

David stood rooted to the spot.

“I had thought you might see the error of your ways, but here you remain stubborn and willful. Must your friends suffer for your arrogance?” inquired the Demon.

David shook his head violently, inching forward with muffled sobs. Shaking with rage, Max gripped the spearhead, but restrained himself at Cooper’s glaring insistence. Mr. McDaniels came to Max’s side and held his son close.

David’s meager form approached the dark window with the white smiling face. The great black wolves turned their wet muzzles; the vyes leaned close with expectant grins. The Demon extended two white hands out the window as if to grant a blessing. Trembling uncontrollably, David placed his hand between them.

The two conversed quietly for a moment while the Demon squeezed and patted David’s hand. Max strained to hear what was said, but could not. Suddenly, Astaroth laughed.

“Of course I shall grant your request, young David!” exclaimed the Demon. “You’re just as tender and sweet as the first spring lamb! Augur, have the stakes removed and permit the quaking craftsmen to shut their doors.”

At Augur’s command, the ogres grunted and strained, using the handles of their mauls to pry at the barricades until they could be wrenched from the rock. Swinging the spikes onto their shoulders, the ogres lumbered forward, giving the harnessed wolves a wide berth as they assembled amongst the chattering imps and vyes. Almost instantly, the gargantuan silver doors began to close in a silent display of seamless machinery. David and Astaroth conversed privately throughout, to the Demon’s apparent pleasure.

“Oh, but naturally we’ll leave them be!” cried the Demon suddenly. “We might have kept the doors open, for all you need worry. I
always
tell the truth, as you well know from that unfortunate book. Aren’t you a precious thing for inquiring?”

David nodded and took a long, shuddering breath.

“Are you going to hurt me?” he asked with a sudden, convulsive sob.

“Of course I am,” said Astaroth, walking his fingers across David’s palm. “You’ve been a naughty, prideful boy, and I’d be doing you a disservice to let such a thing pass. Now answer me a question. . . . Is this the
hand
that turned those awful pages?”

David nodded.

“And are these the
eyes
that read those terrible letters?” continued the Demon.

“Yes,” squeaked the small boy.

“And I suppose this is the very
tongue
that formed those unfortunate words?”

David’s shoulders shook fiercely as he mumbled something incoherent.

“The hand it is,” concluded the Demon, lifting it for inspection. “Witness! I shall consume your sins, leaving you with eyes to see the good I do and a tongue to spread word of my mercy.”

The Demon’s mouth yawned impossibly wide, like a great serpent unhinging its jaws. David turned away.

The jaws snapped shut with horrific force. Max screamed; David crumpled as if he’d been shot. Tearing out of his father’s grasp, Max ran forward to crouch by his roommate, whose hand had been severed at the wrist.

Astaroth looked down at David’s unconscious face with thoughtful consideration.

“The deed is done, the wound is clean, and he is wiser for my gift,” commented the Demon. “His sins are now forgiven.”

Astaroth chuckled, while Max frantically examined David’s injury. Where David’s hand had been, there was no bloody wound, but merely a stump of pale, puckered skin. Not a droplet of blood could be seen.

“Don’t be angry, Max,” said the Demon in a soothing voice. “Help your friend inside the carriage and bring that most curious Key. With the exception of Dr. Rasmussen, the others may go and pave the way of peace with Rowan.”

“But why do I have to stay?” shrieked Dr. Rasmussen.

“It’s Dr. Braden’s request,” explained Astaroth with a sly grin. “I’d overrule her, but I’d say she’s earned a bit of discretion, wouldn’t you?”

Max felt a squeeze on his hand; David’s eyes were small slits of pain. His whisper was frantic.

“Pull me away from him.”

Max did as he was told, dragging his roommate away from the carriage. Gasping with effort, David drew himself up. Astaroth watched them from the window; his smile slowly disappeared.

“Stop this foolishness and get inside.”

David glared at the Demon, leaning against Max with his injured arm bent against his side.

“Solas!”

His words were barely audible, but the effect was instantaneous. The cavern was suddenly illuminated with the light of a million flashbulbs—a blinding burst of light that made the vyes howl and the ogres roar with fury. Augur’s horse reared, almost toppling the revenant, while the monstrous wolves snarled and tugged at the golden carriage. Spots swam before Max’s eyes; he blinked rapidly to glimpse thousands of howling vyes blindly clawing at one another.